Among the Water Fowl 



episode. I had been arduously wading a very boggy 

 area of rushes, a sort of bayou baclc from a laice. 

 Nothing especial had come to light, and I was 

 struggling absent-mindedly on, when I almost trod 

 on a bird upon its nest in some thick rushes. It 

 fluttered out in the terrified, pitiful manner of the 

 Ducks, literally right from under my feet, a brown- 

 ish Duck of medium size, with pearl-grey specula, 

 or wing-bars. Without going very far, it alit in 

 some open water, where I approached it within a 

 few feet, behind some rushes, and confirmed my 

 first impression that it was a female Ring-necked 

 Scaup, distinguished from the other female Scaups 

 by its wing-bars being pearl-grey instead of white. 

 After thus satisfying myself I went back to where 

 I had thrown my handkerchief by the nest. There 

 was a pretty canopy of rushes arching over the 

 neatly built basket, soft with down from the mater- 

 nal breast, in which lay twelve dark brown eggs 

 almost the color of Bitterns'. It was the only nest 

 of the Ring-necked Scaup found during the whole 

 trip. 



Owing to the illness of my companion we soon 

 had to leave the "mountains" and stay in a neigh- 

 boring town for a few days. With a boy for com- 

 pany, I explored the region. One hot day, June 

 i8, we drove twenty miles to Long Lake, — a great 

 alkaline flat, it was, covered with a uniform depth 

 of only two or three feet of water, with great areas 

 of grass and scattered clumps of rushes. I had 

 been told that Canvasbacks nested here, and after 

 an arduous search, finding several Ducks' nests 

 where the broods had been hatched, a female Can- 



186 



